We preach it all the time here on the blog: foreign (western) brands and businesses should seriously consider modifying certain aspects of their digital strategies to perform at a higher level in China in terms of visibility, credibility, and profitability. Why? Because the Chinese online consumer population is largest in the world, and it’s only growing. A recent study reported that a whopping 36% of China nationals purchase goods and services from digital platforms, at least once per week. That’s a weekly total of over 500 Million people, nearly double the amount of the entire United States population! In the wake of this unprecedented e-commerce growth, foreign brands haven’t quite figured out how to keep up in terms of successfully marketing to and reaching this massive population. Foreign brands big and small are still relying on many outdated methods of reaching Chinese consumers, such as email marketing, even though email as a tool is being used less and less in China in favor of popular and easy-to-use communication platforms such as WeChat. In the midst of e-commerce completely taking over as the primary method of Chinese consumerism, foreign brands should react quickly and stay on top of the digital trends in China, including the utilization of their Chinese localized brand, products, and services through the use of fully-Chinese websites for marketing purposes built on an exclusive, newly-approved Chinese domain extension. Last month’s formal approval by the Chinese government of the new Chinese domain extensions .在线 (“Dot Chinese Online”) and .中文网 (“Dot Chinese Website”) to be legally marketed and sold by approved vendors in China mean big news for foreign...

During the final week of January, members of the ChopChop Domains team attended the third annual NamesCon Domain Name conference in Las Vegas. NamesCon, which has continued to grow each year, has once again surpassed our expectations and provided an excellent opportunity for domain investors, registrars, registries, hosting companies, IP and brand protection agencies, and many others to learn and develop their business in the domain name investment ecosystem. Most of the sessions, panels, and networking events during NamesCon primarily focused on cultivating no-nonsense strategies for western domain investors of all experience levels to hone their skills and ultimately make their domain business profitable. However, there is always buzz surrounding the enigmatic Chinese domain market, and so we figured it would be a useful exercise to document some important aspects of domain investing, specifically in the Chinese market, that stuck out to us during NamesCon. Although China makes up a substantial piece of the domain market pie, it can be incredibly difficult to pin down the ebbs and flows of the market, and knowing how and when to appropriately capitalize on maximizing ROI in the China domain space is not an easy task. At ChopChop Domains, we aim to not only provide you with the best possible Chinese domain name registration options, but we strive to educate our audiences on the China domain market in general as well. So, let’s get into some not-so-obvious takeaways of the Chinese domain market from our time spent at NamesCon 2017. Takeaway #1 The first thing I wanted to touch on, which seemed to have been brought up sporadically among the crowded choices...

Happy New Year and welcome to 2017! With an entirely new year ahead of us, a lot of speculation, strategizing, and planning will be an integral role for domain investors while looking forward to the attractiveness and potential held by the Chinese e-commerce market. So what sort of strategies do domain investors apply when forecasting the domain market in China or otherwise? Well, there are several methods to employ when determing the value of a domain name, and many prominent domain investors make their money by applying these various methods and investing in domains that fit the criteria of what makes a domain name valuable. The ins-and-outs of how to value a domain name would require a blog post of its own, so I won’t go into detail here, however I will go over one key indicator of determining the value of domain name: keyword search volume. Specific keywords or keyphrases that receive, say, millions of exact-match searches per month will almost always be more valuable than a different keyword or keyphrase that only receives, say a few thousand exact-match searches per month among the bevy of search engines, including Baidu, which is the most popular search engine used in China. Exact-match and generic keywords derive value from simple supply and demand– there is only a limited supply of meaningful, relevant, and powerful keywords and keyphrases in the human vocabulary, therefore the more “exact” or “generic” it is, the more likely people are to search for it (demand) on Google or Baidu, increasing its value. In other words, website owners generally want to see a high volume of traffic...

Welcome back to the official ChopChop Domains blog! ​It’s been nearly a full year since the launch of ChopChop.domains, and as we near the end of the year and prepare for 2017, we have the opportunity to reflect on some stories and successes in 2016 and what lies ahead in 2017 for ChopChop Domains, Chinese IDNs, and the evolution of a global internet. In late 2015, the idea for ChopChop.domains was originally conceived as a response to the somewhat concerning lack of visibility of Chinese Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in a robust and growing global domain name marketplace. Although still relatively new in the domain name space, Chinese and many other non-English script IDNs have been severely underrepresented through traditional purchasing platforms, and ChopChop was created in order to mitigate this lack of visibility and provide internet users a simple, direct, and hassle-free alternative to finding and registering abundant and affordable Chinese IDNs. The motivation to create ChopChop.domains also came directly from the fact that foreign businesses large and small can have the hassle-free opportunity to protect their brand in China, eliminate the language barrier, and reach a larger online audienceby registering and using meaningful, relevant, and powerful Chinese domain names. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to use a Chinese domain for brands and businesses as well. With the idea and need to demonstrate the power and possibility of Chinese IDNs and subsequently increase visibility, ChopChop.domains was built and soft-launched in February of 2016 as a subsidiary company of IDN registry operator TLD Registry Ltd.ChopChop thus became the world’s first direct retail sales channel offering fully...

Now that the holiday season is in full swing in many parts of the western world, we find ourselves spending more time with our families, giving and receiving gifts, and preparing for the challenges and opportunities that await us in the new year ahead. As a result of the holiday season, many of us are also finding that we are spending more money, especially online. China is no stranger to the online shopping phenomenon during the holidays. Just a few weeks ago, China’s “Singles Day,” which is equivalent to “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” in the US, netted mega e-commerce platform Alibaba alone nearly $18 billion dollars worth of sales, the highest it’s ever been. Alibaba on its own outperformed the total amount of sales reported (just over $8 billion) during Cyber Monday in the US by more than double, and that was the highest online sales day in the US ever reported. The fact that Single’s Day in China crushed Cyber Monday in sales is incredibly telling as to how Chinese consumers feel about spending their money online. E-commerce has been growing in popularity over the years due to convenience and holiday promotional programs, and that will only continue to trend upward as the internet evolves and becomes a truly globalized environment. The holidays represent a moment in time where people are not holding back with spending, as clearly demonstrated by the massive money-making Single’s Day holiday. E-commerce during the holidays present a unique opportunity for individuals, investors, and businesses large and small to capitalize on the online spending boom in China by taking the first steps of...

Our last few blog articles have covered a brief, early history of IDNs as well as certain innovations in Universal Acceptance, and for this week’s blog i’ve decided to combine the two subjects into a more recent history of IDNs and how they are evolving even in the face of universal acceptance issues. Understanding the history of IDNs is important and interesting, however it is even more important to understand the current state of IDNs and its place in the ever-changing internet and domain name landscape. If you can recall, the origins of Chinese IDNs include the rise and demise of the infamous “3721” plugin in the early days of the internet that left many Chinese netizens back then in a state of frustration and disarray. As the internet grew and continued to change, it was clear that Chinese netizens wanted to use the internet in their own native language more than ever before, even though 3721 had somewhat started off internet globalization on the wrong foot. The grand failure of 3721 did not dissuade other companies from capitalizing on the opportunity to advance an internet that did not fully support a multitude of languages, Chinese included. When ICANN initially announced the new gTLD program, several organizations applied for, won, and now operate various IDN strings with the underlying goal of achieving “Universal Acceptance”. As more and more new domain extensions are coming to market each month, universal acceptance becomes an ever-important issue that global internet advocates must address and work to resolve. Currently, there are well over 1,000 ICANN-delegated new domain extensions, with 136 of them being IDNs in...